Tapestry Weaving

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My Hokett kit

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My Hokett kit

I get questions fairly often from people who know I backpack with a loom and want to know what I take. What I pack does vary depending on whether I am going backpacking or car camping or traveling to teach somewhere. 

As a lightweight backpacker, my total pack weight before food and water is between 13 and 18 pounds. The lighter the better as food and water can add another ten pounds to the total. Hiking becomes miserable with more weight than that. So any craft that I bring into the backcountry has to be both small and light.

A conference, a cafeteria, and a lot of humidity... Indy.

A conference, a cafeteria, and a lot of humidity... Indy.

I just got home from Midwest Weaver's Conference which was at Butler University in Indianapolis this year. I have not taught at MWC before but found that it is one of the teacher's favorites. And for good reason. The students were bright, motivated, and self-starters.

(Spoiler alert for ANWG* students next week!) The pre-conference class I taught was Predicting the Unpredictable: Color in Tapestry. This is my color theory class and we start out talking about value. Value is the relative lightness/darkness of a hue when compared to the grayscale. It is incredibly important in art design and I find that many weavers don't understand it well at all. So one of the first things we do is rearrange the yarn table by value. This has an added benefit for me: I don't have to organize the yarn when I pull it out of the suitcase.

A Good kind of retreat: Vermont 2017

A Good kind of retreat: Vermont 2017

I just returned home from a fabulous retreat at Good Commons in Plymouth, Vermont. We had eleven devoted tapestry weavers gather there for five days of weaving.

We met at Good Commons, a retreat center in central Vermont. This is the second year I've held a tapestry retreat at Good Commons and we greatly enjoyed the marvelous food and venue.

Yesterday's Red

Yesterday's Red

Occasionally pieces I wove a long time ago pop up.

Before I became James Koehler's apprentice. Before I really knew all that much about weaving tapestry. Before I was an ATA member and read about tapestry and went to lots of shows and learned everything I could... back at the beginning, I wove some very simple things.

It turns out this one at least, is lovely.

Learning beginning tapestry weaving

Learning beginning tapestry weaving

Today is the third anniversary of my signature online tapestry course, Warp and Weft: Learning the Structure of Tapestry. The launching of this course was my first step away from my career as a healthcare provider. Sure I had been working as a tapestry teacher and artist for many years prior, but I always paid the bills with my therapist income. Three years ago I took the plunge when I pushed PUBLISH on this course and though it has at times been uncertain, I have never regretted taking the leap.

A return to Penland

A return to Penland

At the end of my time at Hambidge I was able to take a day to visit Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. Tommye Scanlin and Bhakti Ziek are two amazing masters of fiber art. Tommye is a tapestry artist and has been a big inspiration and mentor for me over the last half-decade. Bhakti has also become a mentor in a wide variety of ways. She is the master of jacquard weaving but also has a vast knowledge of weaving and weave structures.

The two of them are teaching an 8-week concentration in textiles at Penland. They have 12 motivated students who are working on everything from tapestry to complicated weave structures to overshot to indigo dyeing. I was quite impressed by the variety of projects these students are working on.